


i was gone away without you

by Prevalent_Masters



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Golden Age of Piracy, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Protectiveness, Separations, capture and escape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28987509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prevalent_Masters/pseuds/Prevalent_Masters
Summary: It was a senseless argument. Inane. So inane he’s forgotten what he was supposed to be so angry about by the time he makes it down to the harbor. He's standing, hands in his pockets, staring out at the water and contemplating which fruits to bring back as an apology when the sea wall below him explodes.*Yusuf finds himself locked in the hold of a ship, amongst people who know his secret, sailing away from Nico and Andrea by the minute. It's a longer road back to them than he'd like.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 193
Collections: All and More (18+) Kaysanova Gift Bag 2020





	i was gone away without you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BladeoftheNebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BladeoftheNebula/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [BladeoftheNebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BladeoftheNebula/pseuds/BladeoftheNebula) in the [All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> 1) Joe and Nicky get separated at one point in history and have to find their way back to each other  
> So, I kind of got stuck on one single part of this prompt, where Joe and Nicky get separated and have to find their way back to each other. Didn't manage to work in much else, because my brain just took this and ran really far. Hope it still scratches some sort of itch for the prompter!
> 
> Warnings for major historical inaccuracy, but there are some research notes and links at the end!

It was a senseless argument. Inane. So inane Yusuf has forgotten what he was supposed to be so angry about by the time he makes it down to the harbor. He's standing, hands in his pockets, staring out at the water and contemplating which fruits to bring back as an apology when the sea wall below him explodes.

He wakes coughing water and bile, bound hand and foot, on the deck of a ship. 

Someone toes at his side and he groans. Broken ribs, then. Still healing. “Interesting.”

He looks up. The silhouettes above him are difficult to make out, backlit by the blazing sun. He squints, wincing, until one of them takes pity and crouches down next to him.

The man looks young, but he’s covered in scars. A jagged one across his face, deep slashes on his forearms that speak to blocked blades, the curl of what looks like whip marks over his neck. He grins at Yusuf and his teeth are black. 

“You were dead,” he informs him.

“I was drowning,” Yusuf croaks. “Until you dragged me out of the water, I presume.”

The man tilts his head. “You lay on our deck like a limp fish for nearly ten minutes before you breathed again. My men think you’re the devil.”

“I’m not,” he says, then holds up his bound hands. “Is this necessary?”

The man smiles again. “I know some who would pay a pretty penny for their own devil.”

“I’m not—” he starts again, but the man just stands, pulls his sword from his belt, and shoves it straight through Yusuf’s heart.

When he gasps back to life, most of the men have backed far away, regarding him with fear. One makes a fervent sign of the cross, though he does it in the wrong order—nothing like being confronted with unexplainable immortality to reacquaint you with God after a long absence.

The man who stabbed him, though, grins all the wider. “A pretty penny, indeed,” he says. “Welcome to the _Golden Fleece_. I do hope you enjoy your stay.”

* * *

He doesn’t really have anything against pirates. In his opinion, the colonial governments, with their strangleholds on these islands, are more deserving of the title than the men and women who eke out a living that usually ends in blood on the high seas.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t begrudge them their methods, particularly when their cannonballs rip apart harbors busy with civilians. Or when they chain him up and stick him down in a hold. Or when they know he can’t die.

It’s not a good situation, he knows that much. The ship is moving, which means with each passing second they’re moving farther away from Nico and Andrea, who are probably searching the harbor for him as they speak. He thinks with a pang of Quỳnh, lost not a century ago, and Nico and Andrea’s inevitable panic. He wiggles against the chains, but it’s fruitless. His hands are pinned so high above his head he thinks one of his shoulders must be dislocated, his feet are chained to the floor. They purposely restrained him in a position so strained it would take a great deal of energy for him to get enough leverage to break his hands and yank them out of the cuffs.

It becomes clear by what he assumes is the second day that they’ve decided they don’t need to waste food or water on him. Swallowing the amount of seawater he evidently did leaves one rather dehydrated in the first place—his mouth is dry as a desert and tastes like the bottom of the ocean and he’s lightheaded with hunger.

The solution to his problems comes rather unexpectedly, shortly after he dies of dehydration for what he thinks is the first time. The solution is a cannonball through the side of the ship.

“Oh, no,” he says out loud, as water begins to pool around his feet. The ship shakes with the impact of other cannonballs, and shouts and screams and the clash of metal start to echo from above, and he thinks about how quickly he will sink and drown, wrapped in iron as he is, how weighed down he will be at the bottom of the ocean, how he will drown, over and over again, just like—just like Quỳnh.

The panic sets in just as another cannonball tears through the wall and skids across the floor, buckling floorboards. The entire ship lists alarmingly to the side and, as he twists with panic, the iron loop trapping his feet to the floor rips free. 

He draws his feet up, plants them firmly against the floor, slipping from the gathering water, and twists his hand. He grits his teeth as his thumb dislocates and the bones of his hand crack, the cuff digging gouges is he pulls it free. One down. The other is easier— panic and adrenaline numb the pain.

He fumbles with the shackles around his ankles, tugging at them fruitlessly, but it’s useless—he doesn’t have time left. One of the cannonballs smashed a gaping hole near the bottom of the door and he slams his shoulder against it a few times, further splintering the wood, tearing away as much as he can before taking a deep breath and ducking under the rising water, forcing his way through.

It’s too small. The shackles around his ankles weigh him down, make wiggling through the space difficult. He’s running out of air. He’s stuck, he’s stuck, he can’t breathe, this must be how Quỳnh—

He wakes gasping water and choking. The ship shakes around him. He braces his hands against the edges of the hole and pushes with everything he has. The jagged edges of wood leave bloody gouges against his hips and thighs, but he drags himself free, gasping, crawls through rising water until he reaches the stairs leading up out of the hold and claws his way up them.

The deck is in chaos, men scattered dead and dying, groaning or crying. Men in uniform battle the ragged crew and he cuts his eyes over to the ship attacking them—larger and sleek, it flies a Union Jack.

The Royal Navy. Wonderful. He’d almost rather stay with the pirates, but it’s too late—the choice is made for him when a man in a fussy looking wig puts a sword through his host’s chest and kicks him into the sea. He briefly contemplates jumping ship and finding a piece of wood to cling to, but the shackles around his ankles and the relative immobility they impose give him a much better chance of drowning in perpetuity than floating safely to the next island.

And anyway, the British have noticed him by now, the ragged, bloody man with shackles around his ankles cowering by the entrance to the hold. It’s not difficult to infer his situation. The man in the fussy wig—the captain, he assumes—sheaths his sword and strides over to him.

“And who might you be?” he asks suspiciously. “A captive, clearly, but how did you come to be here? Are you a member of an enemy crew? You certainly look it.” He looks him up and down distastefully, his expression making it obvious—Yusuf does not look like an upstanding British citizen, nor like anyone this man should waste time worrying about. It would be easiest for him to put a sword through him and toss him overboard, too.

“I…” he says, trying desperately to spin a story and landing on an embellished truth. “They attacked the harbor at St. George’s Town. I fought back, they captured me.”

“Ah!” the man says, suddenly magnanimous. He claps Yusuf on the back. “You fought to defend our port, to maintain law and order! A man of loyalty to God and Crown.”

Yusuf valiantly resists telling him how completely he is not a man of either God or Crown. He recognizes this for what it is—a lucky turn, a way back to Nico and Andrea, a rescue, if he can keep his healing hidden long enough to get there.

“Come, we have a blacksmith on board who can rid you of these chains,” the captain explains, beckoning to Yusuf. “And a physician who can attend to your hands. We sail for Nassau, but when we dock it will be easy for you to find passage on a ship back to St. George's.”

His heart sinks. It would have been too easy, of course, for this ship to be traveling back where he needed to go. Still, it is a far more hopeful situation than the one he’s been in for the last few days, and he lets himself be helped onto the British ship, accepts the offering of water and stale biscuits, and lets the blacksmith ease the manacles off his ankles, quickly drawing them away before he can see the open sores rubbed by the metal heal over. The blacksmith takes him for a jumpy, traumatized captive, smiles at him sympathetically and sends him to the physician. Yusuf manages to convince the other man all he needs are bandages and salve, that the manacles weren’t tight at all, and that he’ll be good as new after a few meals. He bandages nonexistent wounds on his wrists and hands and ankles and falls into the offered hammock to sleep for nearly twenty four hours.

They dock in Nassau a few days later and he finds passage on a trading ship heading back towards St. George's the next day in return for help loading and unloading their cargo. Now, the only thing he can hope for is a smooth sail. It should only take a little over a week, and he fervently prays the waters are free of pirates, privateers, and the Royal Navy.

He sends a letter ahead, but he should arrive before it. He will see them soon. He will hold Nico, kiss him. He will promise Andrea never to leave them in anger again. He can almost feel them tucked in his arms already.

When he knocks on the door to their rented quarters in St. George's, no one answers. When he knocks again, and shouts a bit for good measure, a disgruntled man who reeks of rum answers the door, spits at his feet, and slams it shut again.

When he asks the landlady, she says they left days ago.

No, she doesn’t know where they’ve gone.

_Why would they leave?_ He asks himself over and over again that night as he wanders the seedy streets by the docks, dodging drunks and women who beckon to him from doorways in alleys. _Why?_ They had to have known he would be doing everything in his power to get back to them. Back to where he knew they were. He’s been gone for a little over two weeks, no time at all in the scheme of things.

But of course, it would have seemed like an eternity to Nico and Andrea, who were left with the wreckage of a harbor and the knowledge of an attack, who would have scoured the waterfront looking for his body as they did for months with Quỳnh, who would have set out in dinghies looking for him, who may have figured out which ship he was on and followed it to the wreckage and dove to the bottom of the ocean to sort through the bodies. Who wouldn’t have found him, because he was sailing right past them on his way back to where he thought they were. And they wouldn’t have stopped, they would have kept looking—he knows his family. He knows what they did to find Quỳnh, he knows how long it took for them to admit defeat. Years longer than two weeks. 

Eventually, after weeks of lingering at the harbor, watching every ship for signs of Nico and Andrea, he gives up. They aren’t coming back here; if they were even using it as a base for their searching they would have been back by now. He’s on his own.

It’s a terrifying prospect after a solid six centuries of companionship. He and Nico walked off that battlefield side by side and stayed that way since. He doesn’t know how to be alone. He reaches constantly for Nico, holds out a hand for no one, rolls over in the night to grasp a body that isn’t there. Sometimes he finds himself talking through plans out loud, waiting for Andrea to shoot him down or correct him, only to look up and remember he is alone. Cruelly, he dreams of them in detail. Of sitting around a table laughing and eating. Of Nico’s hands on his face, his lips on his mouth, his body over his body. He wakes crying, the pillowcase wet, his heart hollow.

* * *

After they lost Quỳnh, after Andy got washed overboard the first time and didn’t find her way back to them until they reached land a three weeks later, they came up with a plan. The safe house in Cairo, the city where they first found each other after many years of searching. If anyone is lost, if anyone is separated, they will meet there. He wonders if Nico and Andrea have already gone, but if they think him drowned, trapped at the bottom of the ocean, he thinks it rather unlikely they’ll be waiting for him. There’s no other choice, though. He’d rather be there, waiting with a sliver of hope in a city he once called home, than here watching the endless sea.

The voyage itself is grueling. It takes months, and by the time he washes up in Egypt he thinks he might just lay down and let himself sleep until they show up, however long it takes. The safehouse, a small apartment above a moneylender’s shop, is stocked with the supplies they left there the last time, but it’s so full of dust and a rather unpleasant family of rats he has to spend the first few days cleaning, airing it out, and buying supplies at the market. It gives him something to do, some drive. Then he settles in to wait. 

Days slip by into weeks. He reacquaints himself with the city, walking the streets, wandering the market. He’s missed this place, this corner of the world with the familiar scents and the familiar language, the daily echo of the mu’azzin and the people who, if he catches them out of the corner of his eye, remind him of his father in profile, his mother in the drape of their headscarves. 

He finds work because he doesn’t have a choice—they had money stashed at the apartment, but not enough to live off of in perpetuity. He hires himself out as a bookkeeper in the market, working for merchants and traders, keeping track of shipments of spices, coffee, textiles; the ebb and flow of goods and trade so similar to what he remembers from the distant past, learned at his father’s side. He grows friendly with some of the traders, with other bookkeepers and accountants, will eat and laugh with them in the evenings before returning to the apartment and curling up on the pallet that is too large for him alone. At night he recites his way through the litany of reasons why he must stay here, why he cannot leave to look for them, why the best chance of reuniting is patience, is hope, is faith in his family that eventually, they will come home.

* * *

It’s the coldest winter anyone in Cairo can remember. Frost in the mornings, dustings of snow so rare anyone under the age of fifty has never seen it before. They run their fingers through the cold white dust with wonder, children laugh and throw it at each other, a few intrepid vendors collect it from the hills above the city and sell it, dripped with mint and sugar syrup or honey and pomegranate molasses. The novelty of it is enough for them to sell it, despite the chill in the air. 

He cannot join the fascination, or even the ever-present bitching about the cold, everyone’s favorite conversation topic at the markets. All he remembers are other winters, much colder, spent tucked together with his family around roaring fires, trekking through forests and steppes where even the trees are frozen in contorted positions under layers of ice, like marble statues. He’s died from the cold more times than he’d like to admit, but somehow all those memories have a rosy tint to them because he was always with his family. If he shivered in the cold, Nico was the one who warmed him. Now, he shivers alone and no fire can replace the warm body that belongs at his side.

A year and half. It’s been a year and a half, and they haven’t come. They haven’t come. 

One night, when light snowflakes float from the sky, he sits at the table and picks at a meagre dinner. He has no appetite these days. Eating seems like a chore, just as waking and working and sweeping and shopping do. He’s so tired.

There are footsteps on the stairs, and he thinks for a moment it must be the neighbors, before the door slams open and a figure stumbles in, cursing and brushing snow off a cloak that certainly isn’t heavy enough for the weather outside. He’s too out of it to even move towards the knife on the other side of the table, too stunned to stand to defend himself, because he recognizes that voice.

Andrea looks up, catches him in her gaze, and freezes. They stare at each other for a long moment, and then she slumps against the wall and starts laughing. High and hysterical, it sounds like if she wasn’t laughing she might start screaming.

“Andromache? Andromache, what is it?” A hooded figure ducks through the door, knife naked in his hand, glinting in the firelight. He catches sight of Yusuf, sitting frozen at the table, and sinks wordlessly to his knees.

“Nicolò.” His mouth forms the word almost unconsciously, and Nico starts at the sound, then stumbles up and runs out the door.

He sits frozen for another moment before lurching to his feet, staggering after him. At the door, Andrea catches his arm and stills him, staring at him like he’s an apparition, a ghost. She lifts a hand to run over his face, his hair, his neck, patting at him like he might disappear under her hands.

“We thought we’d lost you,” she says faintly.

“I’ve been right here,” he answers helplessly, not sure if he’s angry or relieved. “You didn’t come.”

He wrenches out of her grasp and follows Nico down the stairs, spilling out into the cold street. Nico’s collapsed on all fours, retching into the snow, shaking like he’s seen a ghost.

He crouches down next to him and places a gentle hand on his back, relishing the warmth of him, alive under his hand. “Nicolò,” he says again, and Nico shudders. He retches one last time and then sags sideways, slumping into Yusuf. He catches him, wraps his arms around him, buries his face in the junction between neck and shoulder. Nico’s hands come up, petting frantically at his neck, his hair, his ears, his arms. 

“You’re real?” he asks, voice cracking. “This is real?”

“Yes,” he says, smoothing a hand up and down his back, touching the knobs of his spine, reacquainting himself with the exact taper of his waist, the breadth of his shoulders. “Yes.”

Nico twists in his grip until he’s on his knees facing him, cupping his face in his hands. His breath puffs out in a slight cloud, tiny snowflakes catching in his eyelashes. “I was shouting at you,” he whispers. “The last time I saw you, I was angry, and then—then—” his face crumples and his hands slide down to bunch in Yusuf’s shirt, gripping the fabric tight enough to rip. “Then you—”

“I’m sorry,” he says desperately. “I’m sorry, Nico, I don’t even remember what we fought about, I shouldn’t have left, I shouldn’t have been so stubborn—”

“No, no, it was me, you have no idea how—” he stumbles, stutters, brings his hands back up to Yusuf’s face. “You’re—you’re real?”

He grips the back of Nico’s neck and knocks their foreheads together until they’re breathing the same air, a warm cloud between them. “Yes,” he says again. “I’m here, you’re here, I’m never walking away from you ever again, my love, never again.”

“I’ve dreamed this so many times,” Nico mumbles, closing his eyes, dipping his head to rest on Yusuf’s shoulder, cold nose tucked against his neck. “And then I wake up alone.”

“As have I,” he replies. “But not this time.” He hauls Nico to his feet and they stumble back inside together. Andrea glances up as they come in, as Yusuf bolts the door and guides Nico over to the warmth of the hearth. Nico’s shaking, more from the shock than the cold, Yusuf thinks, but the warmth will help them all. He throws a few more sticks into the hearth and sits Nico down, pulling off his wet cloak. Andrea’s already hung hers to dry. He pushes the remainders of his meal—bread and goats cheese—towards them. “Eat.”

Nico shakes his head and reaches out to grip Yusuf’s shirt in his hand. “Where were you?” he whispers. “We thought...we looked everywhere, we followed every lead we could find. I thought you were gone.” He shivers again and Yusuf grabs two blankets from the bed and hands one to Andrea, wrapping Nico in the other. 

“We knew you were captured,” Andrea says. “We followed that ship, it was sunk and we couldn’t find you in the wreckage. We searched for days, and then we came here.”

He freezes. “You came here?”

She nods. “We thought if you’d escaped it, you would come here first.”

He shakes his head slowly. Beside him, Nico curls his fingers around his wrist and holds him tight enough to cut off circulation. “No,” he says slowly. “I went back to St. George's. I thought...I didn’t think you’d leave so quickly. I waited there for you, I thought you might be searching in the area but that you’d come back to check. Then I came here.”

“How long?” Nico whispers. 

“A year and a half.” Finally, the adrenaline of seeing them again, of touching Nico, starts to ebb and his legs give out. He sinks to the floor next to Nico’s chair, clutching at him. “I didn’t know if you’d ever come.” He’s started to shake, too, the solid warmth of Nico under his hands the only thing convincing him this isn’t yet another dream. _Is this real_ , he wants to echo Nico. _Can this be real?_

Nico groans, his hands finding Yusuf’s hair again and digging deep into his curls. “Yusuf, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

He just shakes his head and buries his face in Nico’s lap, arms wrapped around his waist tight enough to feel the thrum of his blood through his veins. 

“You’re here now,” he says, muffled against Nico, and Nico bends forward to rest his forehead at the small of his back, surrounding him with his familiar scent, this body that Yusuf knows better than his own. Andrea reaches over and settles her hand at the nape of his neck, the warmth of it grounding him, reminding him that it’s real now. His subconscious was never good enough to replicate the little things—the smell of sweat from their journey, the tickle of Nico’s breath against the loose threads of his shirt, the wet ends of his hair soaking into Yusuf’s skin, the exact crackle of the fire or the cadence of Andrea’s voice.

Surrounded, they ground him.

Grounded, he is home.

**Author's Note:**

> The [_Golden Fleece_ ](https://www.howardehrenberg.com/the-golden-fleece-shipwreck/)was the ship of Joseph Bannister, a merchant turned pirate who sailed in the Caribbean. His time was a little before the setting of this fic (he died in 1687 and his ship was wrecked), but I liked the name.
> 
> St. George's Town is a British colonial port city in Bermuda, often shortened to simply St. George's. I think the Guard wouldn't have been stoked on British colonialism, but I don't really have a creative reason for why they would be hanging out in Bermuda in the early 1700s. Maybe helping out with local [slave rebellions (which occurred regularly through the 1730s)](http://www.bermuda-online.org/history1505to1799.htm)?
> 
> Though Cairo's importance as a merchant and trade hub diminished with the decline of the Ottomans, [it was still an important trade city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo#cite_note-wi2267-48) and the second-largest in the empire after Constantinople in the 1700s. The city had ["high rise" apartment buildings by the 1500s](https://medium.com/skyscraperworld/ancient-skyscrapers-76a164015f7f), with lower floors for shops and commercial businesses and upper floors rented out to tenants. This is the kind of apartment I imagine the Cairo safehouse as.
> 
> While the winters in the area are generally mild and the temperature rarely dips below freezing, Cairo does experience snow during cold snaps once in awhile. The last significant snowfall there occurred in 2013 during a cold snap that affected much of the region, and the media claimed it was [Cairo's first in 112 years.](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/13/snow-egypt-middle-east_n_4438571.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADrxPLNOlfR_HlZ3gS-cM8x-mgZ9p38AJ0UTeACvvM5aBJ6LqJrV6S1nOfR8FR0WE3NOLIvgemNqrw-dUdEHhZfp1Y80aMJU1AUFGlKGr__8yk8DMPFr_xYL-3cJqWlugbq-m8YFGBHpYMNAgnOZdT-UyJnUmcGFhsn8kScPi2Ej)
> 
> Title comes from Impossible Soul by my boy Sufjan.
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](https://prevalent-masters.tumblr.com/)!


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